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Dec. 3rd, 2003
This is the time of year that I will mostly have the tunes from 'Postman pat' or more likely 'The fraggles'1 in my head, because frankly either of them are preferable to almost any of the continuous Christmas tunes that are blaring out of every speaker in every shop I go into around now. Since these are the only two songs I have as weapons against these, my final resort in getting rid of any jingle from my mind.
I have to listen to these because Christmas epitomizes that most important of things, from the very first nativity through the ages and now all around us blaring through television and radio we are called to that most wonderous task; I speak of course of shopping. Ah shopping, the joy of wandering around and looking at all sorts of shiny things and wondering who on earth might like it; sometimes even buying something.
For Christmas I break my shopping down into three stages when buying presents;
Stage 1 - Opportunity
This stage is where, around November time, I am dimly aware that the commercial season of good spending is rearing it's head once again3. So, whilst I am shopping for other things I try and keep a vague eye out for anything I think someone I know will like. This usually nets few actual gifts as it's all down to luck if I can see something, but if I do this is when usually the best presents are found.
Stage 2 - Abstract
This is my favourite sort of shopping; intense window shopping and trolling through shop after shop buying seemingly almost random things. For this stage I just work my way through shop after shop and methodically look through virtually everything they have. Again, I keep an eye out for suitable gifts for anyone I know and buy them as I see them. Sadly I also seem to end up with maybe one or two4 things for myself as well. This is kind of an intense version of stage 1 shopping, since I still have no real idea, usually, of what to buy anyone although I may have a general theme for them, such as 'something involving fish'.
Stage 3 - Panic
By this stage I hopefully only have one or two more presents to get, because by now it's probably approaching the time where I should really start wrapping things in shiny paper. So I break out a list of people to get presents for and try to think of something for each of them and then go and get it, if I can, or if not resort to some kind of emergency present.
Shopping, it's a lifestyle.
As a sidenote...
[Poll #214167]
1 Some might actually consider these worse than the jingles in the first place, but I'm used to them by now; they have a sort of calming resignation to them - for postman pat at least, the fraggles I rather like2.
2 Which is, in itself possibly, rather worrying.
3 Possibly because of the robotic Santa’s outside the shops barking 'ho ho ho' to me in grating metallic tones as they wave their arms and look not unlike something from a horror film.
4 Or three or four or...
I have to listen to these because Christmas epitomizes that most important of things, from the very first nativity through the ages and now all around us blaring through television and radio we are called to that most wonderous task; I speak of course of shopping. Ah shopping, the joy of wandering around and looking at all sorts of shiny things and wondering who on earth might like it; sometimes even buying something.
For Christmas I break my shopping down into three stages when buying presents;
Stage 1 - Opportunity
This stage is where, around November time, I am dimly aware that the commercial season of good spending is rearing it's head once again3. So, whilst I am shopping for other things I try and keep a vague eye out for anything I think someone I know will like. This usually nets few actual gifts as it's all down to luck if I can see something, but if I do this is when usually the best presents are found.
Stage 2 - Abstract
This is my favourite sort of shopping; intense window shopping and trolling through shop after shop buying seemingly almost random things. For this stage I just work my way through shop after shop and methodically look through virtually everything they have. Again, I keep an eye out for suitable gifts for anyone I know and buy them as I see them. Sadly I also seem to end up with maybe one or two4 things for myself as well. This is kind of an intense version of stage 1 shopping, since I still have no real idea, usually, of what to buy anyone although I may have a general theme for them, such as 'something involving fish'.
Stage 3 - Panic
By this stage I hopefully only have one or two more presents to get, because by now it's probably approaching the time where I should really start wrapping things in shiny paper. So I break out a list of people to get presents for and try to think of something for each of them and then go and get it, if I can, or if not resort to some kind of emergency present.
Shopping, it's a lifestyle.
As a sidenote...
[Poll #214167]
1 Some might actually consider these worse than the jingles in the first place, but I'm used to them by now; they have a sort of calming resignation to them - for postman pat at least, the fraggles I rather like2.
2 Which is, in itself possibly, rather worrying.
3 Possibly because of the robotic Santa’s outside the shops barking 'ho ho ho' to me in grating metallic tones as they wave their arms and look not unlike something from a horror film.
4 Or three or four or...
Things I have learnt today
Dec. 3rd, 2003 02:14 pmRussia has scuppered the Kyoto plans.
Handling spin control messages in Win32 is really annoying.
My company failed to save money for a Return of the King offer, but could manage to send a load of people to see football. /grumble
Hell is Postman Pat.
Handling spin control messages in Win32 is really annoying.
My company failed to save money for a Return of the King offer, but could manage to send a load of people to see football. /grumble
Hell is Postman Pat.